Lenovo and BlackBerry have reportedly signed a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) that lets the Chinese concern send in the accountants in order to gain an understanding of whether the beleaguered phone-maker is worthy of an acquisition.
The Wall Street Journal reports (paywalled) that the NDA covers all aspects of BlackBerry's …

COMMENTS

A Perfectly Sensible Accommodation? MOU with NSL NDA DNA

Then there's the mobile messaging business BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins has said is BlackBerry's fallback position, although whether the world is ready to have its supposedly secure messages tended by a Chinese concern is another matter.

:-) Poe's Law invoke:-) ..... Given what the media has shared with us recently, one wonders why, if Chinese intellectual dynamism and entrepreneurial flair are such a coveted concern, the likes of a NSA/GCHQ don't step right into the fray with QE flash cash and buy with a tame patsy/novel proxy, slush funded.

Unintended Consequences

"Then there's the mobile messaging business BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins has said is BlackBerry's fallback position, although whether the world is ready to have its supposedly secure messages tended by a Chinese concern is another matter."

Lenovo buying BlackBerry risks them encountering the same sort of problems as Huawei. And for those users who really want BlackBerry secure messaging (Governments, banks) they might suddenly find that they can't use it anymore. What price does one pay then?

It's another example of something necessary and important for the few is supplied by the mass market, but then the market moves on leaving them stranded with few real options. With everything beginning to focus on the consumer, the tools used by the providers are going to become unique and expensive, or possibly non existent. For example, things like PCs used to be used by consumer and provider alike, but less so now.

Who says they want to buy the whole company?

Just like many of the others sniffing around its possible they just want a part of it when the inevitable break up happens. Does anybody really think Fairfax can raise $4.7Bn for this risk ? Doesn't look like it does it?

"It's getting easier to ask who DOESN'T want to buy Blackberry!"

Re: "It's getting easier to ask who DOESN'T want to buy Blackberry!"

That is rather the point. BlackBerry were in trouble once the senior management decided they wanted the cool toys their kids had, and they wanted them to work in the company. And sod the expense.

BlackBerry did boring things like minimise bandwidth, maximise security, make things drop proof and temperature resistant, and make them easily repairable. End users tend not to worry about that, especially as they have got used to two year contracts in a never ending replacement cycle.

From a number of standpoints - overall cost, environmental friendliness - consumer decision making is often pretty stupid, whether it is phones, houses or cars. But our parents and grandparents fought wars for our right to be stupid.